This year is going to be fifth year in a roll that I haven’t been on a vacation. Real vacation for me is to go to some place new, where I don’t know anybody. I place where I can learn about new things, culture, and people.

I recently lost my job, due to expansion of the company. The whole staff did. So, jobless and with a little bit of money saved for times like these, I was going to plan a trip to Mexico. It’s near, plus I had some vacation money saved up too.

 

But life would be too perfect if thinks just worked out according to plan. There must be a conflict for life to progress in some way. After all without conflict, life would be very boring. But the kind of conflict I got next, I don’t wish upon anyone.

 

A week into my unemployment, as I was planning margaritas, Tequila, my best accent for Hola, como estas and dreaming of all the Mexican food I’ll be able to eat for the next 10 days, I got the call. It was a Sunday Skype call like any other call. Well, at least started that way.

Two minutes into the usual chat, my father, without too much warning or prep or change of a tone, told me that my mother has been operated for breast cancer. She had mastectomy – He said and didn’t even miss a beat. Just kept on going, as if he was saying some very ordinary thing. Like as if we were talking about the weather.

 

The more surprising thing was my reaction. Usually what we see in the movies, is people sharing the news in very dramatic way, with long pauses in their speech. As if they are thinking real hard of the word to say. And the reaction of a person standing across, the part usually played by some Julia Roberts type of an actress, is over the top crying with crocodile tears.

 

Nope. That didn’t happen. I want to say that my dad was still in blur, that the news hasn’t hit him yet, but as I find out he’s known this for more then 2 weeks.

 

Since he sounded like he was on drugs, almost too happy, I asked him to get my mother on, so I can find out what was going on. She on the other hand was dazed and confused. Now if you knew my mother a little and you will in the future, you would know that she is a person who doesn’t stop talking. She is the type of person who has an answer to everything, even when there is no answer.

 

But instead answers, my mother created even bigger confusion in my head then my father did. She sounded lost, as someone who is in limbo of her life. Like person who has gotten a death sentence. At this moment I knew that Mexico would have to wait.

 

So instead of a ticket to Mexico, I deleted my 10 days vacation and bought month long round trip ticket to my homeland. I knew that more then anything, now my mother needed the psychological and emotional support that most of the world countries lack when it comes to dealing with cancer. So I had to go. After all isn’t that what family is for. To be there in the good, and more importantly bad times.